Say I'm the only Bee in Your Bonnet
by Desdemona Kakalose
Summary: So it starts with a magazine clipping in a locker door and rapidly breaks free from the rails after that. Seventh grade is just as distressing as the afterschool specials made it sound. ZADR


Note: you can read this as happening in the same universe as Verdika if you would like to

* * *

Make a little birdhouse in your soul

Dib spun the dial on his combination lock, popped the locker open, and fished a thumbtack out of his pocket. The string was still tied around the tiny cap of it, which was a kind of miraculous phenomenon in its own right, with the way he'd been nearly stampeded after fifth period let out late. Carefully, he tacked the pin down over the to-scale representation of his neighborhood and pulled the loose end of the string over to the other half of the map, on the pinboard attached to the door of his locker. That end he attached to the pin sticking out of the center of the state park. Then he fished a juice box out from underneath the web of twine and considered the results with a thoughtful slurp.

"Dib, Dib, _Dib_ ," his lockermate sighed, punching a code into an impossibly complex keypad that had definitely not come attached to the public skool locker. "Still fruitlessly chasing after your imaginary monsters, hmm, _Dib_?"

Dib lifted his eyebrows and took another loud slurp of his juice. "No. How's the zombie dinosaur coup d'etat coming along?"

"Very well," Zim nodded, "thank you for asking."

Dib watched as Zim yanked open his locker and a waterfall of icy mist poured over the edges. "I spoiled your gene reservoir," he said, "by the way. I dropped a garden lizard in it last night."

Zim slammed his hands into the door of the locker with a deafening _clang._ "You meddlesome sack of half spoiled _meat!_ How _dare_ you interfere with the scientific genius that is _Zim_?"

"Earth wins again," Dib said, closing the door to his compact conspiracy pinboard with no little satisfaction. He would have gone on in that vein for some time, normally, only he happened to catch sight of the inside of Zim's locker as he turned.

The thing was, Zim had never really seemed to _get_ the whole locker thing. This was their second year in middle skool, and Zim had gotten as far as noticing that other kids had magazine cuttings mounted in their lockers then promptly lost the thread of observation at its most superficial level. Currently there was a large, ominous thermos giving off a wave of cold steam at the back of it, several blinking tools, and—pasted to the inside of the door—multiple paper clippings of yogurt cups and disembodied eyes. None of this was the unusual part.

"What's, uh," Dib said, "what's with the Italian dreamboat?"

Zim turned also and scanned the door until his gaze too landed on the carefully extracted figure of Masimo Magnifico, popular swimsuit model and tv actor. Zim propped his hands on his hips and puffed out his chest a bit. "Yes," Zim said, "I see you are impressed with the cunning and depth of my disguise as a 'regular human middle skooler _'."_

"What," Dib said.

"Through tireless observation I have discovered that the regular human middle skooler festoons their miniature respite block with images of the adult human creature whom they find to be most sexually appealing."

Dib felt the tips of his ears going uncomfortably hot. "That's a girl thing," he pointed out.

"Nonsense," Zim replied, patting the picture like a proud pet owner, "the Smacky creature has a picture of a female with statistically disadvantageous mammary glands hanging in his, and I happen to know the Smacky is male. I checked."

"You checked."

Zim shrugged. "I also happen to know that you are male, Dib-thing. As is this aesthetically pleasing representational specimen. I bet you thought you could hide it! I bet you thought you could keep secrets from Zim! But there are _no secrets_ that Zim does not already know!"

Dib squinted at him. "Why would that be a secret?"

Zim made a little scornful noise. "It was in your _records_. Your _private_ records. Peeeeermanent records. Zim has accessed all these! No data is safe from the investigation of an Irken invader!"

"Not… everything in a permanent record is a secret? I'm not actually sure if any of it is secret."

"Oh, you would _like_ me to believe that!" Zim stabbed one dangerously pointed finger into Dib's chest a couple of times. "I won't fall for your blatant lies, you—you liar!"

"Do they have one on you?" Dib asked, curiosity getting the better of him. "I mean, a record."

"Like I would tell you," Zim sniffed. "As if."

"What," Dib said, "do I seem like the kind of guy who would sneak into the records office to look at all the intimately detailed files of his sworn enemy in order to get illicit intell?"

"Yes."

"I would never," Dib lied.

"And _so!"_ Zim shouted, "You will never know the secret of Zim's gender!"

"Uh," Dib said. "Aren't you male."

Zim made a noise of absolute and total disinterest, and started scraping loose gadgets out of his locker. They made tiny clinking noises against the vaguely yellow metal. Dib shelved that question for another day—or night, as events might require—and found his attention snagged on the smiling visage of Masimo Magnifico, once again. The guy had a hell of a smile. And muscles. Lots of glinting, impeccably defined muscles. And a speedo which Dib was, uh, trying not to look at actually. Dib found himself inexplicably resentful of the whole thing. He tipped his chin up at the inanely smiling image.

"That's your idea of a," he said, "a sexually attractive human?"

"Huh?" Zim paused with a small cog in one hand, glanced guiltily around the hall, and swallowed it whole in a motion that looked more like panic than plan. "Oh," he said, eyes watering as he coughed around the thing he'd eaten, "yes, the magazine human. I tell ya what, I've really outdone myself with this one. Look at the teeth! Very strong, those teeth. Why, you could chew through your own captured limb with teeth like those."

Zim nodded approvingly at the cut-out, as if congratulating it on its hypothetical success. Dib wasn't sure he'd ever seen that look of stern and total approval directed at anything that wasn't about to dismember a living creature before. Although he supposed given the gruesome exposition it wasn't _all that_ different—maybe this was just more of the same destructive fascination typical to Zim.

"So you don't find him… hot?"

"I am sure the magazine human has a statistically impressive body temperature read out! The hottest body temperature! Much hotter than _yours_ , Dib."

Dib glared at the paper figure. Its smile definitely had a smug streak under its inane toothiness, he was certain now. The head was too small, absolutely no one should have a head that small, it was just—it was—it was _inadequate_. And all that glistening hair was hiding secrets, secrets that Dib would uncover, or his name wasn't Dib Membrane. Which it totally was.

Dib reached over and snatched the clipping off of the door, leaving behind one muscular arm where the tape was just a little too strong. Zim squawked, clawing at Dib with his impossibly pointy fingers, but Dib ducked under his flailing arms and slid to freedom.

"No!" Zim shouted, "My magazine human!"

Dib wiggled the cut-out for a second, and then made a big dramatic show of ripping Masimo's head off. "Good luck being a _normal human_ with a crush-less locker, space boy!"

Zim howled in earsplitting rage as Dib carefully pocketed the dismembered paper clipping and beat a hasty escape.

-V-

Hours later, Dib stood in the dim cavern of his room pacing back and forth in front of a corkboard to which he had pinned both parts of the stolen cut-out. A mass of twine and thumbtacks lay tangled on the desk beneath it.

"I don't understand," he was muttering, "what's the appeal?" He flipped up his magnifying glass and examined the defined pixels of the model's remaining bicep. "There's no _point_ in being that buff! What does he need it for? What's he gonna do, lift a truck? I can do anything he does with half his muscles!"

Sure, Dib didn't really have, like, a _"bod"_ or anything, but he did fine for himself! Hadn't he scaled that entire cursed mountain last month? And hadn't he run all the way back down? And hadn't he swum across that entire river? If it was good enough to escape mountain witches then it ought to be good enough for anyone.

"Is it because he's tall? I'm tall for my age! We can't all be full grown Italian men! What's the _appeal_?"

"Can I go now," Gaz muttered, in her shadowy corner of the room.

"My body temperature is _incredibly_ high!" Dib shouted at her.

There was absolute silence for a moment. Dib's ears went uncomfortably hot again. Good team players, his ears, but not actually helping the situation as much as one might think.

"Look," Gaz said, at last. "Keep it down so I can finish this level, or I'm leaving."

"No don't leave," Dib said, "I need someone to listen to me monologue or it's just _weird_."

"Maybe Masimo doesn't _monologue_ ," Gaz muttered sarcastically. "Maybe that's why Zim likes him."

Dib rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "You think?"

"No," Gaz said. Her game made a triumphant 8bit sound. "Look, Zim is dumb. And weird. Who knows why he likes anything?"

"I think it's the tan," Dib said, ignoring her entirely. "It must be the tan."

Gaz creaked to her feet and shuffled towards the door, hunched over like a wraith coming up from the pit of Hell. "Why don't you go _get_ one then?" she said, and slammed the door behind her.

Dib contemplated the board for a few long minutes, and then, like an afterthought, said, "Maybe I should."

-V-

The next morning, Zim was shoving a fat nubby creature into the tiny slot of his locker with surprising success, when Dib threw open the doors and entered the premises. A few children were tossed back by the sheer backlit force of his entrance.

"Good morning, _Alien Scum_ ," Dib said, striking a heroic stance. "I'm ready to thwart your wiles of the day!"

"HmmmMMm," Zim said, absently, as he put his whole shoulder into pushing the animal through the miniscule slot.

Dib cough slightly into one hand, and then set his fists back on his hips with a deliberate flair. "I said, I'm ready to thwart some wiles!"

"Hnnnummmm," Zim hummed, now throwing himself bodily at the door.

"I _said_ ," Dib started, and then momentarily deflated, dropping his stance. "…What are you _doing_?"

"I need minimoose to open it from the inside," Zim grunted, "some—foul saboteur—broke my ingenious locking mechanism."

Dib squinted at the locker. "Why didn't I think of that?"

Zim let out a crow of triumph as the full plush bulk of the small animal popped through the slat. He pumped a small fist. A tiny affirmative squeak filtered out through the metal, and Zim turned finally from his task, smacking his hands together in sheer satisfaction. Zim was so small, sometimes Dib wondered if he could only feel one emotion at a time. He certainly seemed to feel them _strongly_. It must be nice to be that sure of what you were and what you felt all the time.

"So what were you going on about?" Zim asked.

Dib pointedly redirected his attention from examining the expression of sheer joy on Zim's strange face. Evil joy. Remember: evil joy. "Er. Wiles."

"Ah yes, of course." Zim paused, tilted his head. "You… look different. _Crunchier_ …"

Dib brushed a speck of hallway dust off his shoulder. "Yeah, you know, went out to the beach, got a tan…"

"You look like you got sprayed with paint."

"I might have, yeah."

Zim actually circled him, inspecting the exposed skin. There was a patch he hadn't been able to spray on the back of his neck, so he flipped on his collar surreptitiously as Zim hmmm'ed at him. The alien completed his circuit, stood thoughtfully silent for a moment, and then swung up a dramatic finger to point directly at Dib's nose. The tip of the glove flicked him as Dib reared back.

"Who have you been battling? Hmm? HMM?"

"Uh. What."

"Who has sprayed you with the crunchy poison coating, _Dib?_ Who has doused you with this delicious golden brown pigment of death?"

"No one—"

" _You're lying_!"

"I'm not, I'm trying to tell you—"

"LYING!" Zim shouted, walking backwards through the hallway with his finger still pointed. " _Lying_!"

Dib watched him disappear around the corner of a classroom, still pointing, and then stood nonplussed next to the locker for a while. He picked at a flake of brown paint. It probably _was_ toxic. He should… probably get it off… fast.

-V-

Dib sat on the shelf of the gym equipment room, tossing a football from hand to hand.

"I just don't get it," he said, spinning the thing on one finger. "I mean I get that he doesn't care about it being a male human because apparently that's all kind of irrelevant where he's from, oooor maybe secret? Is it secret? It might be secret. But why _that_ male human? Half the, uh, package was photoshopped anyways. I can tell. I know photoshop."

Below him, Torque Smacky lunged upwards again, fingers grabbing futilely for the spinning football.

"This one time I spotted the lighting change on a fake wolfman in a game show with like, one second of buzzer time. I mean it was actually a game where you were supposed to name the thing in the photo but it wasn't like I could just _call_ it a wolfman when the fur was so _clearly_ in an evening light and the biceps were obviously in mid-afternoon. Maybe it _is_ the biceps? Maybe Zim is into buff… things."

Torque Smacky was starting to froth at the mouth.

"Maybe it's like an aesthetic thing. Why do people like buff guys? Is it part of some evolutionary impulse to mate with a thing that can lift rocks off your cave after you've collapsed a mountainside trying to escape a yeti, say, after taking too many flash photos of it? I guess I could have benefited from a _little_ more muscle mass."

Dib examined his arm, still tossing the ball idly from one hand to the other. They did look kind of scrawny. And there were a couple spots with a rash from where he hadn't gotten the paint off fast enough.

"Give me the _ball!_ " Torque howled, snatching at Dib's dangling feet.

"Huh?" Dib looked down. "Oh, yeah. Sure." He glanced out at the milling throng of football players, looking confused and forlorn as their life's purpose was cruelly withheld from their grasp. They were so lost without the football, so directionless. It was up to Dib to save them from the terror of existential uncertainty. He flipped the ball up into his dominant hand, eyed the distance, and sent it sailing through the open entrance and out into the crowd, who immediately began to cry and cheer and hold the ball up to the exultant glow of the florescent lights.

"Thanks for listening Torque. You know, you're not so bad."

Torque was staring at the trajectory of the ball, eyes wide. He hastily wiped away a speck of froth. "A perfect spiral…" he said.

"Well," Dib said, shaking some dust from his coat, "I guess I better get to class. Wiles to thwart and all."

Torque grabbed him by the collar as he came down the shelves, physically lifting him up and swinging him around. "That," he said, "was a perfect spiral. I haven't seen that since the playoffs against Private Rich Kid Skool last year."

Dib nodded thoughtfully. "Private Rich Kid Skool _does_ have all the best sports."

Torque eyed him. "You watch the games?"

"No," Dib admitted, "I was just trying to be a conversationalist."

"Look," Torque said, "You gotta join the team. We're gonna get creamed at the homecoming game and then I'll never get laid."

"Er," Dib said, "that sounds like a personal problem. Also, you guys hate me."

They both looked out at the team milling around in their practice jerseys, still weeping over the return of their prodigal sports implement. Actually _everyone_ hated Dib, it was just that the football players were huge and angry and more likely to actually throw Dib in a trashcan than, say, a gaggle of cheerleaders were.

"I'd let a three legged _roach_ onto the team if he could throw like you," Torque said, at last.

"But I don't even know how to play," Dib pointed out.

Torque shrugged. "We'll figure out the plays, you just have to throw the ball."

"Torque, look at me," Dib said, pinching the skin on one wrist. "I can't tackle."

"Quarterback doesn't need to tackle."

"Look," Dib said, "I appreciate the offer, I guess, but—"

"Bro," Torque said, grabbing Dib by the shoulders, "you will look so cool, and you will get so buff."

Dib blinked. "Cool," he said, slowly. "Buff…"

They both looked down at Dib's scrawny arms.

"Okay," Dib said, straightening up, "sign me up for sportsball."

-V-

Dib spent the next three evenings at practice, which he loathed, and so he didn't see Zim again until Friday morning, although he had his surveillance program set up to flag him if any suspicious readings came through while he was busy. He was yawning into his binder, waiting for biology to start, when Zim took the seat directly beside him in a bold move that spelled business for the day. Normally Zim sat a little bit in front of him, just far enough to avoid the more blatant attempts at "spying".

"So," Zim sniffed, although how he did that without a visible nose was beyond Dib. "Been busy with one of your little projects lately, hmm Dib?"

"I guess you could say that," Dib replied warily.

"Spying on the glorious progress of Zim, no doubt."

"Well," Dib started, rubbing at a sore spot on his shoulder.

Zim's eyes snapped dangerously narrow. "What is this!" he shouted, reaching out for Dib, who did his best to knock away Zim's grabby hands and ultimately failed. Zim snatched his coat sleeve down and practically ripped his shirt sleeve up, and then snarled at the skin underneath. There was a huge purple bruise there. Dib winced; it had gotten a lot uglier since the last time he looked at it. The practice dummy was made of way stronger stuff than it looked.

"Zim _knew_ it! You've been battling, Dib-monster. You've been out there on this filthy planet fighting with some other threat to the Earth!"

"What? No I haven't!"

"Is it another alien? It's another alien isn't it! Zim isn't threat enough for your disgusting ball of dirt, huh? Huh?"

"Zim it's not what it looks like!"

"Zim is no earth fool, Zim is a genius! Zim is too brain smart for your pitiful attempts at deceit."

"You really don't need to bring my planet's collective IQ into this—"

The alien raised his hand. "Teacher drone," he said sweetly, "Zim is sick. Sitting next to the Dib's _horrible stench_ has made my organs all bad. I need to go to the nurse."

"Of course," the teacher replied. " _Dib_ , stop smelling so bad."

Zim snapped to his feet, gave Dib a mean smile, and marched out the classroom door. The rest of the class gave Dib queasy, speculative glances.

"I don't—I don't smell," Dib said, looking helplessly around the room. "I don't."

The kid in the desk just behind him made a sympathetic noise. "Puberty, man," he said. "Gets to the best of us."

-V-

The homecoming game was on Saturday night, and the boys spent most of the night complaining about their girlfriends or lack of girlfriends re: the dance afterwards. Dib ignored nearly all of it, pulling on the weirdly invasive and unexpectedly constricting uniform with just about the whole span of his attention. He was still bruised pretty mightily, but most of the general scream of soreness had faded the day before and now he was actually feeling… a little bit stronger? Which would be cool if he didn't keep thinking about Zim marching out of the classroom the morning before. Hard to get too excited about anything with that constantly looping in your head. It definitely didn't feel like a victory for earth. Mostly it just made him feel like a jerk.

Torque smacked him on the shoulder ( _ouch_ ), startling him out of his reverie. "You ready to go, rookie?" he asked.

Dib rolled the shoulder, taking stock of his physical state. He'd fought on worse. "I guess," he said. "Was it totally necessary for the whole team to pile on me yesterday, though?"

"Mhm, yep, totally." Torque shoved the mouth guard directly between Dib's teeth. "Look, you pull this off and things are really gonna change for you, you feel me?"

Dib made an uncertain noise around the mouth guard.

"Just do it like we practiced and we can't lose," Torque went on. "I'll give you the plays, you just gotta shout 'em."

Dib nodded.

Torque smacked him again ( _ouch!_ )and wandered off to pep up the regular team. Dib metaphorically girded his loins. Or possibly literally girded them. He wasn't entirely sure about this whole jock strap program.

A thing nobody bothered to tell Dib about football? The stadium lights are _bright_ when you come right out of the dark hallway and onto the field. He was still vaguely dazed by the change when the collective hustle of the team jostled him into his appropriate place on the line. A cheer went up, the team went down, and Dib found the ball in his hands.

You know what? He could do this.

Dib called out the nonsense of syllables he had been drilled on, lifted the ball, and _threw_. It was a beautiful throw. A perfect, direct spiral. Of course he was tackled by no fewer than three enemy players almost before the thing left his hands, but, he could definitely see with the one eye that wasn't buried in turf that it had been an excellent throw.

Dib felt his confidence surging upwards.

Maybe it was beginners luck, or something, but a couple plays into the game he was actually doing pretty well. He'd been running after and away from things nearly his whole life, and while he couldn't catch a ball to save his life, he actually had some practice grappling with large angry things that wanted to flatten him. Those things usually had horns and fur but hey, it was close enough.

By the time halftime finally rolled around, Dib was feeling pretty good about things in general. Stuff, you know? Just, generally things.

He settled against the bottom of the bleachers while all the real football guys furiously hashed out a game plan for the second half. On the field, the marching band stomped red-cheeked and sweaty to the dulcet tones of somebody's amplified ringtone left too close to an announcer's microphone.

"Hello, Dib-traitor," a voice from just above him said.

Dib turned around to see Zim, arms crossed, lurking on the floor level of the bleachers. His uniform had been replaced by a hideous and oversized sweater in the school's clashing colors, and his wig was sporting an actual taxidermied armadillo head. Dib felt his ears go pink again.

"Zim," he said, warily.

"I see you've engaged in the mock battling ritual of the pubescent earth monkeys," Zim said, with a little chin flick of disdain. "I too have come here to express my support for this human rite. Certainly the primitive gods of this planet-slum will look favorable upon our fellow dirt offspring."

"Football isn't religious, Zim."

In the crowd higher on the bleachers, a voice let out a gut wrenching scream of support in response to the exhortations of the cheerleading squad. The wail lasted a full thirty seconds.

"Theeeennnn again…" he added, after a moment of consideration.

Neither of them said anything for a while. It was kind of unsettling.

"Soooo," Dib said, "you realize this kinda means you're rooting for me. I mean, I'm on the team and all."

Zim delicately picked a fleck of lint off his impossibly puce sweater. "Zim is very specifically rooting for all the pig children except you, Dib-traitor."

Dib groaned. "Zim I'm not fighting any other aliens or monsters or what the heck ever right now. I got the bruise from _football_ practice. Which you would know if you didn't shout at me constantly."

Zim blinked, the false pupils of his contacts rolling from Dib to the team and back to Dib. "Well of course Zim knew that," the alien said, at last. "Zim was only _antagonizing_ you, Dib-creature. Yes. Yessss, it was all part of a masterful, secret plan. A secret plan to… to… _antagonize_ the Dib."

"That is the lamest excuse you've ever given me and that's saying a lot _._ "

"Lies! Zim has given _much_ lamer excuses."

Dib took a sip from the Hatorade bottle on the bench next to him, and then offered it to Zim, who snatched it up and took a delicate sip.

"Sooo," Zim said, "you're still gonna expose me to the earth authorities."

"Of course, yeah," Dib said. He took the bottle back and set it aside.

Zim visibly perked up. "Well," he said. "You won't _succeed_ , Dib-monster."

"Try me, space-boy."

"Oh, I will." There was an entirely malevolent gleam in Zim's eye now, as he backed slowly away from the rail. The effect was spoiled a bit by the discordant clanging of the bleacher under his feet. "I _will_."

Dib watched him go, rubbing vaguely at his ears. That had gone… well? His attention turned back to the Hatorade bottle on the bench. He lifted it up, thoughtfully, and pressed his lips against the slightly shiny end of the straw. It had a faint tang of strange saliva.

Halftime ran out, and as the last of the band kids slumped off the field with their trombones in hand, Dib was dragged back into the last minute of frantic game planning. It was all pretty unremarkable. The first play went off as smoothly as anything, and Dib found himself fighting back a yawn in the middle of a hike.

The clock ran down. The teams lined up. Dib avoided the glare of the enemy kicker who had made some really pointed gestures at him earlier in the evening. Everything was squared up and ready to go, when like a signal across the night sky, a cloud of explosive pink smoke rose from the roof of the gym. Dib's mouth went dry.

"Time out!" he called.

"What?" Torque snapped, rounding on him. "We have _seconds_ left in this game and you wanna call time out now?"

"Yeah, I just," Dib said, stripping off his helmet, "I gotta go."

" _Go_?" Torque demanded, jogging after him towards the sidelines. "You can't _go!_ We're in the middle of a final play here! _"_

"Sorry," Dib said, "Zim's up to something. I gotta go check it out."

"Who the fuck cares what that weird green kid is up to! This is homecoming!"

Dib shrugged, pulling off his shoulder pads. "The fate of the earth comes first."

Torque's co-captain, hovering behind them, muttered, "I guess we could take little cripple Jimmy off the bench…"

On the bench, Jimmy began to tear up and cough pathetically.

"Right," Dib said. "See? You'll be fine."

"Dib you _twerp_ , you're giving up the only shot at being cool you'll ever have in your stupid scrawny life."

"What?" Dib asked. "I'm _already_ cool." He put one hand on the railing of the bleacher and vaulted over it, paused to look at the slowly gathering team over one shoulder. "I'm the savior of the earth!" he shouted, and then disappeared off into the night.

Behind him, Torque grimaced. "Alright Jimmy," he called, "you're up."

The team turned to look at him.

"God bless you sirs," Jimmy coughed weakly.

Jimmy, as it happened, threw the winning touchdown that night.

-V-

Dib skidded into the dark gym ready for anything. He scanned the streamers and the DJ booth and finally located Zim hunched over the punchbowl, glowing beakers in his gloved hands.

"What are you up to, Zim?" he shouted.

Zim flipped his goggles up onto his forehead, revealing bright red sclera beneath. He grinned like an aggressive zipper. "Like you'll ever find out."

"Oh, I'm gonna."

Zim scoffed noisily. "Even if you _did_ somehow comprehend my multi-layered and carefully orchestrated scheme, you'd never manage to _stop_ me."

Dib strode across the floor of the gym, kicking balloons out of his way. "I totally would. Will, I mean. I'm buff now," he added. He sort of casually flexed one arm, which totally looked different than it did four days ago.

"It looks the same," Zim said.

"What, no, it totally looks different! I worked hard on these biceps. Way harder than Masimo McPhotoshop ever did."

Zim squinted at him.

"The magazine guy," Dib explained, "from your locker."

"Uhhh oh, oh! Yes, the magazine human. Wow, that sure was a while back!"

"That was less than a week ago, Zim."

"Time sure does fly!"

Dib looked uncertainly across the table. This was not really going how he anticipated. Not that he had anticipated anything in particular, exactly, but it had involved generally more… impressiveness. Maybe a spotlight.

"You… wouldn't say I'm hot now," Dib edged, "would you?"

Zim referred to a beeping mechanism on his wrist. "Your temperature readout—"

"I mean attractive," Dib hastily corrected. "Like Masimo. You know, ripped."

"Ripped–" Zim started, with a look of dawning nausea.

"I mean I look different now!"

"You look exactly the same," Zim remarked.

"But I worked out," Dib said, "I played a _sport_. What else do you want me to do?"

Zim looked bewildered. "What does _Zim_ want?"

Dib threw himself onto the table like it was a couch, sending tupperwares full of chips flying to the ground. "If it's not the tan and it's not the muscles, what the _heck_ is it you like so much about that stupid hunky supermodel?"

Zim pursed his lips for a moment, and then understanding visibly dawned on his strange features. "Oooh," he said, "this is about the sexual selection criteria. Oh, Dib Dib Dib _Dib._ You pathetic little earth monkey. Obviously the magazine human was a ruse."

"What."

"Yes," Zim went on, looking insufferably pleased now, "even Zim's locker is masterfully calculated to maximize earth 'normalcy' through _grueling_ statistical—"

"You just stole the cut out from some other kid's locker didn't you."

"Yeeeaaah."

"So you don't, uh," Dib said, "actually find him attractive?"

The alien let out a patronizing little chuckle. "Of course not, Dib child. He looks _stupid_. Stupid things are beneath the magnificent attention of the great and powerful Zim!"

Dib watched Zim shake his small fist, and felt himself letting out a breath it seemed he had been holding for days now. He grinned, and he reached across the table to where the glowing beaker was sitting innocently, forgotten.

Things could finally go back to normal, thank _God_.

-V-

No one seemed to notice that a huge circle of the room was now missing as they meandered in from the football field, hooting and punching the air and carrying little cripple Jimmy on their shoulders up the hill. The faintly glowing scorch mark on the gym floor went likewise unremarked upon, as did the acid-chewed table. The tupperwares of chips Dib had knocked over in his earlier fit of histrionics, however, received bitter wails of disappointment. One child publically swore vengeance on the fiend responsible, to the approving bloodthirsty hoots of his classmates.

Dib observed them all, swinging gently by the ankle from a streamer that hung over the edge of the accidental new skylight. He sighed. With victory comes sacrifice. Zim, however, remained as unscathed by failure as ever, and at that moment was cheerfully chewing on pretzels by the edge of the snack table as a hoard of children howled for gruesome vengeance.

There must be somebody up there playing a cruel and unfair game of favorites. Just—just _look_ at him, nodding along in his stupid wig, so casual, Dib could just _shake him_. In fact, forget all the stalking and planning and researching, when Dib got down from here he was just going to go up to him and grab him by the shoulders, and pull him closer, and—and where… where had he been going with that?

The DJ booth lit up with a fizzle of blue and green illumination. Music rattled on, if you could call it music. In Dib's opinion it sounded more like the hellish kaleidoscope of a dance club and a kiddy ride at the carnival, but his classmates all seemed to be into it so, you know, it must have been supposed to sound that way. He was beginning to think there was a conspiracy of adults aiming to keep the world of middle skool dances firmly locked in a twilight of decades that never really existed, perhaps for some nefarious purpose. A cult? A ritual of some kind? As Dib pondered the possibility of dancefloors as a form of eldritch summoning, the streamer wrapped around his ankle gave a faint noise of distress and then ripped in half.

Dib landed in the titanic punchbowl like a comet kicking up a tsunami. Zim, leaning against the table just beside it, took a sip from his red solo cup.

"Nice of you to drop by," he said, without looking back.

" _Zim_ ," Dib gurgled threateningly.

"Observe their merriment," Zim said, gesturing vaguely at the dance floor. "The poor vermin. Little do they know that their inevitable subjugation stands but feet away from them. Mmm. This punch is pretty good!"

Dib climbed out of the punchbowl and rolled to a halt on the tabletop just behind his nemesis, taking deep sticky breaths.

"It must be nice to live such carefree, idiotic lives. Like a speck of dust, floating brainlessly on the wind. Like seamonkies. Like GIR. They think little of their inevitable deaths. They just want to get down."

Dib watched clumps of children _getting down_ through his pink tinted glasses. It did sort of look like fun, if you could ignore the fact that it was a huge waste of time and energy that could have been progressing the knowledge of mankind instead. Sets of twos awkwardly bobbed in time to an arrhythmic beat. Why did they do it if it was so awkward for them? Dib could hardly stand to watch their uncomfortable attempts.

"Jealous of the genuine human experience, spaceboy?"

"Puh-lease," Zim said, making a dismissive noise through his poorly defined lips. "I'm just taking a moment to appreciate the awfulness of the thing I am soon to destroy." He examined the fingers of one glove. "Yeah, you know, when I rule this horrible swamp of a planet, there's not gonna be any of this disco pop romping. Murder and subjugation all hours of the day, yep, that's where these guys are headed."

"I'll never let you," Dib declared, and then coughed up a teaspoon's worth of pink punch.

"I'm thinking you can be, mmmm, my pet monkey," Zim said. "I mean, if you survive that long. Or a trophy? I could have you taxidermied. You'd hate that. Oh, _oh_ , maybe I'll just mind control you? That could be fun."

Dib glared at him through watery eyes.

"I could have dances like this," Zim said, his tone growing more and more distantly dreamy. "I could have dances twice—no, three times this size. I could gather the peasantry in their horrible peasant clothes and play music, and I would come down from my throne of human bones and sweep across the floor—dashing of course, like a Tallest at a victorious crowning, and—"

Dib let out a watery little noise of surprise as Zim dragged him off the table with a flourish, as remarkably strong for his size as Dib always forgot he was. Zim snapped him up, spinning, and the room blurred around them.

"Of course they should all see what becomes of the vanquished foes of their glorious ruler, their pitiful would-be savior complacent in the arms of ZIM, how they will weep and wail, how they will beat their tiny fists against the floor which will be a disco floor, by the way, I like how they light up in little squares."

Zim caught Dib by the small of his back, one claw crushing Dib's outstretched hand, and in one swift movement he lowered them both into a dip.

"What victory," Zim breathed, his false eyes wide with visions of their future. "What exquisite victory."

Dib sucked in a half-choking breath. The ceiling above them gave way with a creak and a crash to the leprous spatter of stars across a green sky, its edges leaking trails of sawdust and broken cables, and in the midst of it all was Zim—every inch the eldritch nightmare Dib knew him to be. Dib's heart beat very fast. If he could only—if he could only—

"Ugh," Zim said, glancing down, "you're dripping punch."

And Zim dropped him like so much wet laundry.


End file.
